This blog post provides a suggested methodology for helping users of VMware vROps/vCOps decide which of the existing solutions, the vROps Management Pack for Oracle EM and the VMware vROps Hyperic Plugins for Oracle, should be used to monitor their Oracle workloads.
It’s been a nearly a year since VMware transferred the vCOps Adapter for Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) to Blue Medora and since that transfer Blue Medora has released a number of major updates as well as rebranded it the Blue Medora vROps Management Pack for Oracle EM. Over that same period of time VMware has continued to evolve their Oracle-focused (Oracle Database and WebLogic J2EE) Hyperic agent-based plugins culminating most recently with a October 2014 update to the Oracle Database plugin that provides support for Oracle Database 12c.
Depending on the circumstances / scenario, either the MP for Oracle EM or the Hyperic Plugins for Oracle technologies can be used to provide vCOps/vROps-based visibility into Oracle workloads. VMware states the following (PDF Reference Page 52) -> “Hyperic Oracle metrics can be used for basic administration but for detailed analysis the OEM adapter is required”.
In the remainder of this blog post I am going to briefly outline when each should be used as well as scenarios where both should be considered.
The decision largely hinges on (A) whether Oracle Enterprise Manager is already deployed in the environments and (B) how much data beyond just core Database or J2EE server metrics you are interested in having available in vROps for things like clustering/high-availability, database listeners, and the actual J2EE applications themselves.